It is traditional at times like these to try to find the cat in the image.

Now! Mr. Mattingly has a pleasant practice of making a limited number of posters of our cover art available to those interested. To call these “posters” is to do them a disservice; they are beautiful giclee prints worthy of framing. I say this with confidence, as we have four of them (the art for Saltation, Ghost Ship, Dragon Ship, and Mouse and Dragon) framed and hanging in our living room.

If you are interested in purchasing one of these gorgeous prints, please contact David at davidATdavidmattinglyDOTcom

Necessity’s Child isa stand-alone Liaden Universe® novel that takes place “in a pocket,” as we’ve been saying, of Ghost Ship. For those who follow Sharon’s blog, this is the book that bore the working title of George.

If you wish to order a signed copy of Necessity’s Child, to be published in February 2013 by Baen Books, you may do so from Uncle Hugo’s SF Bookstore, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, or the local indie vendor of your choice. Unsigned books will also be available everywhere fine SF/F books are sold.

Scheduled for release in trade paper from Baen Books on July 2, 2013. Cover art by Stephen Hickman.

art by Stephen Hickman

Please note that, despite what it says on the above mocked up cover, this publication is NOT a novel; it IS a collection of short stories.

In fact, it is the first of two collections. This volume contains the seventeen stories that first appeared in SRM Publisher’s Adventures in the Liaden Universe® chapbooks 1-8 and “Sweet Waters,” which appeared in 3SF, and in the SRM chapbook Calamity’s Child — that’s about 152,000 words of story.

This is the eighteenth novel detailing the adventures of Clan Korval and other residents of the Liaden Universe®.

The hardcover will be in bookstores in June 2015. For those who treasure a passion for eArcs, count backward four months from June for your probable release date. No word yet on whether there will be an audiobook edition.

Neogenesis, the twenty-first novel in the Liaden Universe®, created Some Time Back by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, will be published in January 2018.

Here’s the blurb:

Menace from Back Space Looming out of the Dust of Time

The Complex Logic Laws were the result of a war waged hundreds of years in the past, when two human powers threw massive AI navies at each other and nearly annihilated themselves. Being human, they blamed their tools for this near miss; destroyed what was left of the sentient ships, and made it illegal to be, manufacture, or shelter an independent logic.

Strangely, however, the Free Ships and other AIs did not turn themselves in or suicide, they merely became wary of humans, and stayed under their scans. A clandestine support network grew up, including hidden yards where smart ships were manufactured, and mentors, humans specially trained to ease a new intelligence into the universe, socialize them, and teach them what they needed to know to survive.

Among those with a stake in the freedom of Independent Logics is Theo Waitley, who is somewhat too famously the captain of intelligent ship Bechimo. Theo’s brother, Val Con yos’Phelium, presides over a household that has for a generation employed an AI butler. Recently, he approved the “birth” of the butler’s child, who was sent, with human mentor Tolly Jones, to rescue or destroy an orphaned AI abandoned at a remote space station.

Then there’s Uncle, the shadowy mastermind from the Old Universe, whose many projects often skirt the boundaries of law, both natural and man-made – and the puppet-masters at the Lyre Institute, whose history is just as murky – and a good deal less honorable.

All have an interest in the newly-awakening Self-Aware Logic that is rumored to have the power to destroy universes.

Due Diligence: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 24 has been published to the Usual Suspects (including but not limited to: Baen ebooks, Kobo, BN, Apple, Amazon) and will be available for sale as the Various Ghods of Indie Publishing will.

Novella “Due Diligence” is Lee & Miller’s 81st fiction collaboration.

Here’s the teaser:

When Clan Korval knows your name. . .

Abandoned on a strange port by a scam gone bad, his license to pilot rescinded, and his pockets very much to let, Fer Gun pen’Uldra was teetering between trouble, more trouble, and bad trouble. Cornered in a cheap bar by a too-knowledgeable stranger with an unlikely offer, Fer Gun realized having no money and no license might be the least of his troubles. Clan Korval knew his name and that proposal was hard to refuse. . .